Dichotomy
by CrookedSpoon
Summary: One-shot. Mukuro is not one to rest, when his world is at stake.


**Title:** Dichotomy  
**Characters:** Fran, Mukuro; Ken, Chikusa, M.M.  
**Rating/Warnings:** PG; I think Mukuro is enough of a warning  
**Word Count:** 1150  
**Prompt/Theme:** Nov 20 "lost in a dream from which I can't awaken" at **31_days**  
**Summary:** _He cannot rest, when the world,_ his _world, is at stake._

* * *

He couldn't help but overhear the arguments. Where did they take the time in a pressing situation like this? They were running from something they didn't know would follow, something they weren't sure had noticed who exactly had fooled their watchful, blindfolded gaze.

They were stopping for the night, time out, so why did Fran feel so rushed? The Vendice couldn't prove it was them, they hadn't seen anything, they could only infer.

"I have enough of this!"

There was a clatter, a chair toppling over.

Never a silent minute with M.M.: When she wasn't talking, she was pacing. And when she was pacing, the floorboards clicked and creaked beneath her high-heeled boots.

"We can't just sit here and do nothing. We have to wake him up somehow." Her voice rose with the intensity of conviction; she felt truth in the words she spoke, believed in the rightness of her opinion when no one else did. Fran assumed she acted like them, too. Hence the pacing.

"He needs rest." Chikusa said, always the voice of reason, if you could find reason in a killer that wasn't born but made not to feel.

"Don't you think he's had enough rest already? He hasn't moved in _years_!" She wasn't backing down, she wanted it her way.

But she wasn't the only one.

"Exactly." Chikusa said, as though that one words was final, as though it explained all the reasons for them to do as he thought was right.

Maybe it did for him, but she could not see through the clarity of his thoughts. "If you agree with me, then why do you persist we shouldn't wake him?"

"Mukuro-san's gonna wake when he's gonna wake-byon!" Ken cut in, always the brash, impatient nature.

"He's too weak. His muscles have wasted over the years, right now even breathing is hard for him."

Fran stopped listening. There was no point in loitering. He had heard enough to know where they all stood. Always behind Mukuro – even if their reasons varied like the children of a distorted family, the root was the same.

Balancing the tray he carried, Fran slid inside the dark room Mukuro slept in, soundless, like a ghost, an illusion. Inside, one lone candle battled the gloom, a brave, suicidal soldier that ignored the odds of winning. All that mattered was how many shadows could be converted.

Fran placed the tray on the nightstand, careful not to knock over the candle. He reached out to draw back the thin blankets Ken and Chikusa had draped around the bed to keep some of the chill and the light out. Mukuro's senses were feeble from disuse; they had to adapt slowly to the new surroundings.

It was only then that he noticed a figure sitting at the edge of the bed, now outlined by the orange glow.

"Shouldn't you be sleeping?" he asked, not entirely unsurprised.

Mukuro's head turned slowly, like that of an owl, eyes catching the light. They both looked red. "Oh, you don't think I've rested enough as it is?"

The question startled him. He wondered if Mukuro had overheard the conversation earlier, if he had heard it through Fran's ears or his own and if it bothered him. Absurd and petty thoughts. "It doesn't matter how rested anyone thinks you are. You know as well as I that illusions drain your strength and you need it now more than ever."

There were those who counted on Mukuro's help, naive little children who believed in his words and sold their souls to his two-sided promises that cost more in the end than they agreed to pay.

"Then you of all should understand. You've tasted the gift as well." Mukuro's hand slid up Fran's forearm, cold even through the leather. "Do you remember what I told you? Exhausting tasks can be rewarding too, the exchange proportional. But sometimes it can be _exponential_."

The hand tugged at him, a sure sign of danger, of compulsion, but Fran had never learned to listen. He sat down beside Mukuro, confused. "If you have enough energy to do this, you could use it to restore your body."

Mukuro chuckled and his lips stretched wider, thinner. Fran wouldn't be surprised to see a snake's tongue shoot out from between them. "Bodies are nothing more than containers. Right now, I have no need of this one as long as there are others I can use."

Fran blinked. Mukuro brushed strands of hair out his eyes, the hand even colder against his forehead than it had been on his arm. It felt so unreal. "Then why did we have to go through the trouble to retrieve your body?"

Mukuro chuckled. "That's easy: Symbolism and spite. We needed to show Byakuran a portion of what we are capable of, to steal something from right under his fingers. Now he doesn't feel as if he had something on us anymore, something to bribe us with. And the others – Ken, Chikusa, my Chrome and the Vongola – they think the same."

It began to make sense somehow. Human beings needed their symbols, little signs of hope that kept them going, even if the path became clear later, when they looked back on it. He, too, had believed everything would change now that Mukuro's body had been freed from its confines, never realizing that no one could restrain him or his mind. He manipulated from the shadows, was a shadow himself, obscure, intangible. He could reach you, but you couldn't reach him.

"Still, you don't have to force yourself." Fran twined his fingers around Mukuro's wrist. Just because it made sense didn't mean he had to agree. "Working illusions while your body is unconscious, that must be doubly taxing. I can hardly imagine."

Mukuro stopped playing with Fran's hair, lips twisting into a terrible smile. "It became a necessity." He avoids saying when it did, as if he forgot when it happened or didn't want to acknowledge that he had ever been locked away. "It's another form of living when your body can't, an existence apart from yourself. I may not feel my body anymore, but this way, I freed myself from the restraints of the material world."

Fran's eyebrows knitted. He remembered reading about out-of-body experiences, how it was difficult to return the longer you left your body, and he asked himself, "Aren't you afraid your body is going to die while you're outside of it?" But Mukuro was different, surely this couldn't apply to him.

"Was God afraid when Christ died?"

Now, here was a question Fran had never thought about. He scratched his chin, turning the matter over in his mind. "I don't know. I think God isn't afraid of anything, except maybe that people stop believing. That's what keeps him alive, after all."

Mukuro's smile softened, a genuine, fragile little thing. "So," he said, "believe in me."


End file.
